[week 11 summary]
Pop Through Button Devices for VE Navigation and Interaction
A class of virtual reality input devices is put forward in this paper. These virtual reality input devices combine pop through buttons to address the challenge of increasing the number of interaction modes without utilizing more complicated and obtrusive devices. Two different presentations, the FingerSleeve and TriggerGun, are discussed and analyzed specifically.
The pop through button contains two buttons. By pressing lightly or firmly on the button’s surface, it can achieve clearly distinguished activation states. Compared to traditional button, pop through button has characteristics like twice as many activation states, minimum requirement for physical activity and more natural for activating inherently sequential. Those advantages can help to improve virtual environment interaction.
The TriggerGun is a holdable device with two pop through buttons, one triggered by the index finger and another triggered by the thumb. Those two buttons are separately designed to suite the natural movement character of each finger.
The FingerSleeve is a wearable device. An elastic fabric with plastic sewn onto it can snuggly fit the index finger for most users. The pop through buttons are glued on the plastic with carefully designed shape, size and position.
Tasks for exploring and evaluating the impact of pop through devices are discussed. The ZoomBack technique allows user to navigate in a virtual environment. By lightly pressing a button, the user is translated directly toward the target he points to, while by lightly releasing the button, the user is returned to the original location. If the user presses firmly, the translation will be kept even after the button is released. The LaserGrab technique allows user to navigate with regard to the relative distance between the user’s head and hand. Additionally, an orbital mode is activated by hard pressing on the button. Snapshot technique helps the user to easily take snapshot with pop through buttons. A cropping widget is invoked by pressing lightly and then, after adjusting, a harder pressing will take a snapshot of area within the frame. From all those three applications, we can see that the principle of mapping between behaviors and pop through buttons are very natural and effective. The user feed back also proves no difficulty of adapting and controlling this new device.
To better evaluate the device functionality, a real application with pop through device modification is designed and implemented. Compared to the old official design, the CavePainting with pop through devices can support the original functionality equivalent to that of Pinch glove, achieve extra functionality and avoid many of the ergonomic problems.
I like this design a lot. Since it is easy to manipulate and capable of handling multiple choices with simple operations. I am wondering if there is more application or area that this device can be extended to.
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